I'm going to disagree here.
Is it really all that new? Or is it just the latest in a long line of graphical MMORPGS that dates back to the 80s?
As someone in the PRON industry once said, "We've survived by making "Deep Throat" and 1,000,000 sequels."
We're all paying customers. Paying that $13/month (or whatever) gives us not only the right but the responsibility to call attention to what we don't like as well as to point out what we do like. If I don't like, for instance, the Crafting and Merchant system (and I don't or, at least, I think it could be made far, far better), then I have the right and the duty to express myself, whether it be by posting in the Forum here and/or by sending feedback directly to SoE (and I've done both). If others feel the same as me -or disagree with me for that matter- then they can and should voice their opinions wherever and however they choose. If that means multiple threads along the same lines, so be it. A MOD can delete the duplicates if he/she sees fit, but I see no reason to stifle people's opinions.
A Ferrari is a direct decendant of Henry Ford's Model T. So too, in alot of ways, EQ is just the latest incarnation of Ultima or Neverwinter Nights or any of the other MMORPGs of the last 20 years. The general goals- get more powerful- is the same. The ways to achieve this might've been modified and expanded, but they still boil down to hack and slash and quest. Sure, it might look better (and it unquestionably does) but just because something looks better doesn't necessarily mean it is better. Or that it couldn't be made better.
My biggest single gripe about SoE is that they really treat their customers like *****. Customer service is almost an alien concept to them. It's their game, by God, and they know best. They make arbitrary decisions (witness the crafter fiasco) and don't even begin to consider the consequences of such a dramatic change rather than target a necessary fix to the handful of people and instances wherein the bug actually applies. They totally refuse to consider changes suggested in good faith and well-reasoned by their customers. They look at what, 700,000 subscribers and think that, with all that revenue, we can't be doing anything wrong. That's an attitude that generally leads to disaster, though, with the competition being what it is, that's not a likely outcome in this case.